UW student launches geology game for K-12 learners, no download needed

A University of Wyoming graduate student has built a geology game that Albany County teachers, homeschool groups and summer programs can use immediately on any browser, with no download or login required.

Stephen Oni, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in UW’s Department of Geology and Geophysics, unveiled YouAreAGeologist.com on June 1. The platform is built for K-12 students and drops players into the ancient sequoia groves of California’s Sierra Nevada, where they move through a field-style story, collect specimens and answer standards-aligned quiz questions.

For classrooms in Laramie and across Albany County, the appeal is practical as much as academic. The game gives students a way to work through real geology concepts even when a field trip is out of reach, and it removes the usual software barrier that can slow down classroom use. A teacher can pull it up during a lesson, a homeschool parent can use it at home, and an informal education program can add it to a day of science activities without having to install anything first.

Oni said he wants more people to fall in love with geology and the natural world, and he framed the project as a way to reach young people who may never stand at the field sites in person. The game tries to recreate that sense of discovery by letting students create their own field researcher avatar, choose one of eight real sequoia grove sites, gather rocks and other samples, and move ahead through quiz questions that award points and improve their ranking.

The project also grew out of Oni’s own fieldwork and the downtime that came while he was waiting for lab analysis. What began as a pause in graduate research became a public teaching tool aimed at younger learners, which gives the University of Wyoming another example of campus work that leaves the lab and reaches outside Laramie.

That matters in Albany County because it shows how UW research can turn into something immediate for local families and educators, not just a publication or a conference presentation. In this case, the payoff is a free, browser-based lesson in geology that can travel far beyond campus while keeping Wyoming’s flagship university visible as a source of outreach as well as research.